NY Times columnist Virginia Heffernan’s experience with the History Channel’s iPad app, Civil War Today, made her wonder at the morbidity of virtual re-enactment, and how so many keep their distance from painful history: 

Any directive to relive painful history – and “preserve” it, for that matter – makes me apprehensive. With this app, I keep remembering why people don’t, actually, want to “live” history – especially when history is the holocaust of the slave trade, the tragedy of American slavery and the horrors of the miserable holy war waged to abolish it. That’s why most of us opt to study history, as un-immersive and old-fashioned as that sounds.

Read the rest here. 

–Lana Polansky

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